PACked with love and care

One of the biggest ways we were blessed during our time on home assignment was by our PAC team. PAC stands for Prayer, Accountability and Care. This is an idea we got from our mission organization, OMF International, at a pre-home assignment workshop we went to several months before the end of our last term. We thought that this was a great idea in theory, but wondered if it would work in real life and with people's really busy schedules.

We thought and prayed about who we would ask to be on our PAC team and God brought these 3 couples to mind from the town in California where we live on home assignment, 2 of couples being from our church. We knew them semi-well and they all seemed to have a heart for ministry as well as knowing a little about our ministry in Japan.

Since we had never had a "PAC team", we weren't sure exactly what it was ourselves. It was a little hard to try to communicate it to these friends, but we started by getting together every other month or so to visit and pray together. We tried to share with them specific issues and more personal prayer requests that we might not write to everyone in a prayer letter. We also tried to explain more about our general missionary life and our specific call to ministry in Japan.

God has really blessed us through this wonderful group. They take seriously their role as supporters; not just by prayer and finances, but emotionally too. Our PAC team have continued to meet monthly even as we are on the field to pray for us and learn more about how they can be a vital support network for us. They are true "Fans in the Stands".
We are all reading through this great book "Serving as Senders". We have even been able to "meet" with them via Skype. They shared with us recently that they feel God has indeed called them to this vital role as senders and they are committed to being a part of sending us off well.

We can't sing their praises enough...ok, really we praise the Lord for blessing us with them; but truly we are so thankful for their precious time and energy spent to "love on us" from afar. I think God knew we really needed this extra encouragement and support network from "home", something we missed at times during the many difficult ups and downs of our last term.